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Mr. Ian Bruce: My hon. Friend is right to be concerned about the deal. The Minister did not respond properly to the challenge I gave him about the BT deal. I have a fax from Telewest, a leading cable company, whose concerns about the negotiations with BT about the cost of access by other companies to the network are shared by all cable companies. There is a feeling that a "super-highway"--and not "super-highways"--is to be set up in this country. The Government must respond to the real concerns of the cable industry and others investing in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Fallon: I hope that we will have that response at the end of the debate, and that the Minister will give us news about how the regulator is proceeding with the deal.

Mrs. Roche: With great respect to the hon. Gentleman, he clearly did not listen at all to the remarks by my hon. Friend the Minister of State. The hon. Gentleman said that we do not recognise the language when he talks about the BT deal. Clearly, discussions are continuing between BT and the regulator and we will follow them with interest. In due course, their findings will be made known far and wide.

Mr. Fallon: That is confirmation that the Government are not involved in any of the discussions, despite promoting the deal. We wait to see the results from the regulator, and I can assure the Minister and the Under-Secretary that we shall follow developments from the regulator and the Department when the decision is announced.

It is precisely because the previous Government promoted competition in these markets that we have the degree of inward investment to which the Minister of State has paid tribute. The UK is now the number one target in Europe for inward investment and much of that investment is in the new technologies.

I turn now to the essential philosophical difference between the Opposition and the Government. For us, the whole point of encouraging an information society is not to enable people to collect information, but to use it. We see information technology as a means, not an end. If the Government will the means--as they profess to do--they must also will the end. Giving citizens more information is meaningless if the Government restrict the use to which it is put.

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This debate comes at the end of a week in which the Government have announced less choice for consumers. Parents will no longer have a choice of grant-maintained schools, selection in existing schools or new grammar schools. All schools will be reallocated to specified new categories--not by parents, but by the Government. The debate comes at the end of a week in the middle of which the Government published our performance league tables for the national health service. These tables would never have been published by this Government--[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): Order. It would help the debate if Ministers would not make remarks from sedentary positions.

Mr. Fallon: The previous Government first published league tables for schools, one of the most important sources of information for parents. Ministers voted against that legislation--the Minister of State himself voted against it in November 1991. When I became Minister for schools, I found that a great deal of information about school performance was locked away in the director of education's safe. Some local education authorities that inspected their schools refused to publish the results. Some that tested reading skills throughout primary schools refused to release the results. We made the results available for all primary and secondary schools.

If the Minister wants to be taken seriously as an advocate of the information society, he should admit that he was wrong to oppose the release of that sort of information on the performance of schools and hospitals to those who want to make choices.

The information society is not a public relations exercise in redefining the relationship between Government and those they govern. It is not an issue of presentation. It is about encouraging choice and, therefore, improving services. It is about encouraging more critical consumers of services, whether those services are public or private, and allowing consumers to act on the information that they have received and use their judgment instead of Ministers or local councils substituting their judgment.

The conclusion of this debate is clear. If one truly believes in an information society, one must also believe in its consequences--that citizens should have faster and better information, that power in our society should be pluralised and that choice should be put where it belongs, which is in the hands of the individual.

The Opposition are proud of our record in information technology. We know that it was possible only because of the privatisation and liberalisation that stood as the founding principles of our economic record and because we believe that if one is committed to markets, competition and to flexible skills and labour, and one is prepared to treat customer choice as the guiding principle, one can truly be respected as an advocate of the information society.

11.1 am

Mr. Ian Taylor (Esher and Walton): On my way here this morning, I drove past a large advertising hoarding. The message was, "Rock the Net." It was the advertising slogan of a software company specialising in intranets.

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I do not expect the House to jump and jive during my speech on the net, but I will try to reflect on one or two of the issues that still leave me intrigued after an enjoyable period as Minister for Science and Technology.

First, I welcome my successor, the Minister, to his job. I think that he has the most stimulating job in the Government. In many cases, information technology is the determining factor in whether this country will be able to cope not only internationally, but in delivering services to our own people.

Looking around the less than crowded Benches this morning, it is sad that more of our colleagues do not fully understand that, whatever their personal interest in this House and whatever reason they have the honour to sit on the green Benches, the information age and the information society with its digital implications mean a transformation in the way in which government and services are delivered. Health, on which the Minister touched, education, which both he and my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) mentioned, transport and virtually every aspect of the services that are delivered to the public, such as social security, will be transformed by the technological revolution that has been occurring in recent years. Our difficulty in trying to encourage our colleagues to take an interest is highlighted by the fact that not many of them will necessarily make a contribution to the debate today. I only hope that they realise that, as times change and by the time we get to the next election, the politics and government of this country will be infused by many aspects of information technology that they may not have fully grasped and that they may have difficulty talking to their much better educated electorates.

Before I get to the wider issues, I must refer to one or two matters that were outstanding when the election determined that I was not to continue as Minister. On the BT non-deal--it was a deal, but it was immediately dressed up the following morning as a non-deal--in October 1995, I hope that the present Government have learnt that although it is an admirable aspiration to connect up schools, an ambition which is shared on both sides of the House, the matter is better left to a stable regulatory situation and market investment than to cosy deals.

Two questions demonstrate what I am trying to say, so I shall not go over the ground that my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks, the Opposition spokesman, covered admirably. First, if it was decided that BT should have earlier access than that laid down in the 1991 arrangements to enable it to use its existing networks for simultaneous broadcast transmission for the BBC and ITV to homes, what licence fee should it be charged for that privilege? One cable industry licence--the franchise in Northern Ireland--cost £14 million, so BT should be charged about £500 million for the privilege of getting earlier access to homes on a national basis. That figure is not totally different from the amount that it will be hit with under the windfall tax. That fee was never part of the deal, however, because it was simply not properly thought through. If one disturbs competitive arrangements, there have to be cost consequences and, perhaps, compensation for the cable industry which bid on a different basis for the cable franchises.

Secondly, it is all very well saying that BT should have free access to schools, but if BT is the dominant provider in the marketplace--despite the fact that there are 150 or

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more competitors, it is--and if it has access to schools and puts in the connections free of charge, it is logical that all the other suppliers will have no opportunity to compete. They will simply be squeezed out of the market. That raises the interesting question of the costing arrangements for access to the local loop through the connection that BT would have provided free to the school, which I am sure the Director General of Telecommunications is looking into closely--I know how good he is at these matters. It does not take long to realise that the connection is the easy bit. The question is what on-line services are to be provided. What is the cost of switching? What is the effective access charge to the Internet service provider other than BT's own Internet service provision? In other words, there are profound implications. One of the worries of the cable industry and the Internet service providers is that if one has access to the school, one has that core component of access to the local loop, which will be one of the determining factors in where money is made in telecommunications as we move forward.

I raise those questions not to go over ground again, but because they are genuine questions. I am delighted that, in a written answer to me, the Minister stated that the consultation with the Director General of Telecommunications


That is an important safeguard.


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